Zara, one of the most fashionable clothes retailers in Europe, will enter the Romanian market in autumn, with the opening of Bucharest's second mall, Plaza Romania, in the Militari district.
Zara will be introduced as a franchise by a Lebanese investor doing business in the Middle East, according to market sources.
The store will cover 2,000 square metres, a surface exceeding the classical store layout. Considering this large area, the investment should stand at between one and two million dollars, according to estimates by market experts. Representatives of Anchor Mall, the owner of Plaza Romania, were unwilling to offer further details.
Zara is owned by the company Inditex SA, being one of the retail chains with the highest growth rate in recent years. Inditex derived turnover worth 3.9 billion euros in 2002.
The first store was opened in 1975, with the company now having 650 stores located in 48 countries across Europe, the United States and Asia.
Zara has 27 stores in Central and Eastern Europe - in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia and Russia. Unlike rivals such as Hennes and Mauritz (H&M) of Sweden, or GAP (the United States), Zara's success is based around an integrated business model through which the entire process, from design and production through to marketing and sales, is carried out in-house.
All this means zero dependence on suppliers. H&M, for instance, buys clothes from almost 1,000 companies.
In the case of Zara, its clothes are manufactured in the Spanish city of La Coruna.
claudia.covaci@zf.ro
